09/08/2012 • 2 Comments •Buffalo Tales Music News

I love a great TV series, Sopranos, Breaking Bad.. etc.. etc.. I just recently got obsessed with Sons of Anarchy about an American Bikie gang in a little town called Charming. I couldn’t just watch one episode and it really consumed my life for a while. When it had ended and we got as far as we could go, I thought, What am I going to do now?!?

I always find a way to relate to the characters and I even take on their characteristics after in everyday conversation, which most people find funny.. I really don’t know why I do it, it probably has something to do with me being the sponge for any inspiration to write.

I was working on this EP at the time and i said to Stu Hunter (producer of the Blood and Bone EP)  I wanna capture this feeling I have when I watch Sons of Anarchy , I wanna be able to visualize the bikies on their  bikes smoking cigars and running from the law when listening to the song. While everything I create needs to be evocative for me, I was more adamant this time.

So I picked up the big red and bold Gretch guitar I own and started playing a blues riff in E minor ( the riff you hear today) and wildly bending the sound with the whammy bar to create a feeling that we were in the middle of some desolate place or an old whisky bar in the middle of a desert or something..

It happened very quickly and Stu and I jammed that out for a bit.

I started singing the melody quickly after and noticed the word Eighty eight on the Rhodes piano that stood in front of me. “Eighty Eight!” I screamed, really having no clue as to what it meant. It was all about creating a vibe, a certain feeling musically so the listener can be transported to a different place, wherever that is, is up to you.

“Run, Run devils son, two, two call the screw..” it really had a Sons of Anarchy vibe and I pictured the song being used for the show. I wrote the lyrics as if I were a biker going into a battle.

Later that week after Stu and I had penned the song and it was nearly tracked and done I went to see my friend Vanessa Gray, who is right into Hypnotherapy and I decided to give it a shot.  We talked about the philosophy of the mind and body, which is right up my alley and she told me something I had never heard before.

She said that 88% of your mind is subconscious…

I thought perfect , that’s exactly how I usually operate anyway cause sometimes when I write a song I think to myself, where the hell did that come from?  It just so happens that Stu and I wrote eighty eight that week and was looking for the reason as to why I kept wanting to call this tune eighty eight.. I had been happy that the song was about explaining the eighty eight reasons why I loved someone but I needed another reason, now it had two meanings and I was satisfied and it felt like the song had more purpose.

The song came about in two parts, one part was my riff at the start and what I call the “whisky bar blues feel” of the song and the other part Stu Hunter came up with, that was his beautifully crafted, cheeky, happy, Piano vibe, that has a New Orleans characteristic to it.

The sounds we pulled on this track we were both so proud of, Stuey is the master of having the patience to get the right sound and those guitar sounds were perfect in my book. Not to mention the mans piano chops.

Whilst recording vocals I felt we conjured up some wild spirits and the track seemed to take on a life of it’s own. Machines turned off and on inexplicably.

Eighty eight was a moment in time I will look back on fondly.

As the track fades you hear a quirky whistle sound like a parade of cartoon characters being left behind in some ticket take parade. That was us just being stupid and we decided to leave it in. It reminded me of Stu’s little princess darling of a daughter Ivy, who is just too special for words and is one of the kookiest people I know. I love her so much. I thought this particular cartoon like sound we had created was what I had imagined what goes on inside Ivy’s mind most of the time.. So we decided to leave it in cause we thought it was funny and again a little snapshot of time to look back on.

I love this track.